THE DEPARTMENT OF TOURISM

After finishing the Yalta Boulevard Sequence of Cold War novels, I made a conscious decision to move into the contemporary world. This may seem like an obvious thing to do, but I'd spent my entire professional career writing about a time and place rather distant, and so the idea of moving to "today" was a bit disconcerting. However, it was also necessary, for I was starting to fear I was escaping the confusing present to hide out in the past. So I jumped feet-first into the post 9/11 world with the CIA's Department of Tourism, and Milo Weaver, a spy who just happened to be my first American main character.

While I began the Weaver books thinking of them as a trilogy, anyone who's read An American Spy knows that I've left the door open for more books. Those certainly will come, but for the moment I'm moving onto other stories. If you've read An American Spy, you might even suspect the reason: I was exhausted by the end of writing it!